(Photo from the article shows Brother Victor Marshall, flanked by brothers David Johnston, left, and David Llewellyn.)

The story does bring out several points missed by other articles, rumored by others close to the situation, but never attributed in print. Brother Marshall is actually the second black member of Gate City, although he has been the lightening rod of the controversy. (What concerns me more than anything else on a personal level about this story is the position it has placed Brother Marshall in. I'm certain he simply wanted to be a Mason in Gate City, not a court case or a test of tolerance.)

The other aspect of the story has to do with Prince Hall recognition. According to the NYTimes article:

Five or six years ago, the Prince Hall Masons in Georgia approached the mainstream Masons about recognition, said Ramsey Davis Jr., Grand Master of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge in Riverdale, Ga. But the group was not interested, Mr. Davis said.

“There’s deep-rooted racism in the leadership,” he said. “I’ve had many calls from white Masons to say they cannot understand why things are this way.”

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Freemasonry is the largest, oldest and best-known gentleman's fraternity in the world. Historically, it is based on the Medieval stonemason guilds who built the great castles and cathedrals of Europe. Mythologically it is founded upon the building of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, as told in the Old Testament of the Bible. Modern Freemasons likewise use the tools, traditions and terminology of those earlier stonemasons as allegories for building Temples in the hearts of men.

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Hodapp and Alice Von Kannon developed episode outlines for the History Channel program, Brad Meltzer's Decoded in 2010, and contributed material on conspiracies and secret societies for TruTV and the American Heroes Channel. They have both appeared on National Public Radio, the History Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and the American Heroes Channel - most recently in 2017 on America: Facts vs Fiction.

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